Healthcare IT as a source of resilience

Healthcare information technology (IT) systems can be used to inform workers and managers about changes to workplace vulnerabilities and new means that may be available to meet challenges such as widely varying demand. IT system success, though, depends on adaptability in the face of change, which is a property that IT systems do not currently demonstrate. Resilience engineering seeks to create and maintain systems that can cope and adapt to complex, changing environments and can be used to develop IT systems that are capable of adaptation as the sharp (operator) end of healthcare requires. Research into resilience needs to address questions that have genuine import for healthcare and IT systems that are intended to support it.